As many of you may know, in February of this year, Juli and I made a decision that we were going run a little experiment. Experiment you say? Or just plain crazy talk? Call it what you will we decided to run an experiment where by we removed the TV’s and Internet from our home. Remove the internet?! But BK your a web designer, what are you thinking? And how are you writing this blog then? Well I’m not totally depriving myself of such life necessities. The bills have to get paid somehow, and I don’t think anyone will be taking Joslin’s poopy diapers as payment. Heaven knows if they did we would be RICH! So yes, I have internet access at work, but at home, it is gone. Outta here like Vladamir, whatever that means. So your next logical question is probably why?

Well, it’s complicated. We decided to do this for many reasons. But first let me just reiterate … TV’s and Internet are gone! And by gone I mean the TV’s were taken down to Goodwill and dropped off. (Juli is still not happy about that decision.) I knew that if we tried to *hide* them that we would eventually cave and just bring them back once the first episode of LOST came on. No, we had to get rid of them and make it so they wouldn’t come back. Ever. So we did and on to the why…

Reason 1 – Again it’s complicated. The biggest reason is that Juli and I were not being very good parents. We weren’t beating the kids … to bad. We were still feeding them … sometimes. Where we were having problems though was in how much we interacted with them. I would come home tired from working all day. Juli would be exhausted from eating bon bons and talking on the phone all day and we just wanted to relax and watch “our” shows. (Just kidding love!) Not that she will read this because she doesn’t have internet. See where I’m going with this? It’s my alternate diabolical plan to talk about Juli behind her back. MUUHAHAAHAAA!

So rather than interacting with Noah and Hailey and Joslin, we would put movies on for them so we wouldn’t be bothered by their incessant requests to play Chutes and Ladders (A fun game apparently if your 4 yrs old) or read them the latest high seas pirate adventure (also fun to fantasize about if you are 4). So that is reason 1.

Reason 2 – We started to notice that a lot of the shows we were watching were not really that good. The continuous stream of sex, violence, cruelty, and debasing of good moral values was being piped into our home. Even watching shows like Extreme Home Makeover was becoming a problem. Not because Juli would salivate over some of the shirtless, muscular designers, but because the advertisements for shows like Desperate Housewives or Dancing with the Stars would come and they were just vulgar. We were constantly on edge especially if Noah was around in trying to protect him. So that is reason 2.

Reason 3 – Elder M. Russell Ballard gave a talk in 1989 in which he said, “Good families face very significant challenges in controlling the use of television and videotapes in their homes. I agree with Dr. Victor B. Cline when he said, “I am convinced by a vast amount of research that the images, fantasies, and models which we are repeatedly exposed to in advertisements, entertainment, novels, motion pictures, and other works of art can and do … affect the self-image and, later, the behavior of nearly all young people and adults too.” ~ The Effects of Television.

We were one of these good families that were having significant challenges in controlling usage. Hailey is a wonderful, sweet little girl but if you know her, once she gets something in her mind it stays there and doesn’t leave. TV was addictive to her. We would wake up at 4:00am or earlier, with the TV going. She would be surfing for “Channel 6″ (Our local PBS channel) so she could watch cartoons. Noah would beseech us with passionate pleas and logical reasoning of why he needed the latest toy or game. Both would come home and make a beeline for the TV. I know that Mom and Dad had similar challenges with the girls and to a lesser extent me, and I didn’t want to go through that with our kids. So that is reason 3.

This post is getting rather long so I am going to break it up and post what we have experienced in our home the past few months. Some of the challenges of not having TV or internet and what we have learned so far. I’ll just say, we have seen some amazing growth from every individual in the family.

Till then…